


what are you running from?

by telm_393



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Character Study, Dystopia, Friendship, Gen, Loss, Nightmares, Past Violence, Survivor Guilt, Zari-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 15:46:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15270834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: Zari lived, and they didn't, and she knows why.She ran.





	what are you running from?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unwittingcatalyst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwittingcatalyst/gifts).



> Note that there's some graphic violence and blood in here, but it's brief.

Zari thinks too much. Everyone used to tell her that. Her parents. Behrad. All the other people in their hideouts on the edges of society. As if their minds weren't going overtime too. When there's nothing, imagination runs wild, and minds wilt until they find something to latch onto. Zari latched onto hacking. Engineering. Running. She used to run all the time, whenever she could. Sometimes she was playing tag with her brother, because he loved tag and she loved his innocent laughter. Sometimes she was just alone, dodging the rubble and darting along the edges of her broken city. That was when she was too young to understand how dangerous it was to have simple fun.

Eventually, she understood the danger, and understood that she'd done something good back when she didn't, because it turned out that running was what saved her.

Her, no one else.

But it sure wasn't fun by that point. Wasn't freeing. It was kind of the opposite.

Machines were something that never stopped being fun, even when they became about survival too. (Everything became about survival as she grew and realized that she and her family were always so, so close to extermination. That Behrad was always close to experimentation, once the amulet chose him.)

She liked machines because she liked fixing things. She still does.

These days, she can fix things that are supposed to be unfixable, and that's a rush. At this point she has to admit that back in her time everything felt hollow. Everything inside of her was as gray as the outside, because she knew nothing would get better. All she could do was go along with it and try to protect her family, protect Behrad, who was so strong and so, so vulnerable.

Zari's particular issue was that she was brilliant. She still is, obviously, but it's less of an issue now that she actually has a chance to do something that matters with her overactive mind, now that she's not always eaten up by the futility of it all.

At least, Zari always thought that her particular issue was that she was brilliant. That her family's particular issue was that they were close enough to being metas for ARGUS to always be on their tails.

She thought that right up until ARGUS came for her family and she realized that her particular issues was that she was a coward.

She doesn't think she is one anymore.

But that doesn't really matter, because in the moment she had to be brave, she wasn't.

She ran.

She thinks about it a lot, now that she's on the Waverider, now that she has a chance to make everything right, even though there's a big, big part of her that says that it's not as much of a chance as she'd like it to be.

She's been through a lot, she's fought a lot, she's done some good, she's come to terms with a lot of the things that hurt the most, even when it comes to her family, to Behrad, who isn't here anymore. She's accepted that they're not here anymore and that they might never come back, but some days it seems like none of the things she knows, none of the things that she's accepted intellectually, matter.

Because she was a coward.

In her dreams, she's running through the streets. She's running from demons. From Vikings. From a Beebo doll, a couple of times, which is so weird it's almost funny to her, especially the fact that it's somehow still terrifying when it's happening. From ARGUS. She's running from ARGUS.

This time, she's not sure what she's running from, but she knows it's worse than anything, and she knows it's not ARGUS. She doesn't think about how or why she just knows things all of a sudden. She's a smart person. Maybe that's it. Maybe meta powers are kicking in and she's clairvoyant or something, that sounds like her kind of luck.

She's running so far and so fast it's almost like flying, her sneakers hitting the ground with a thud like a heartbeat, weaving through familiar streets, hearing familiar sirens, a voice commanding her to go back to wherever she's living now, it's curfew, can't be outside, you'll get shot, do you want to get shot? Now she's running from that too. She ducks into an alleyway, and she sees a corpse. She thinks she recognizes whoever it is, but it's pretty rotted by now, and she's met a lot of people who could be corpses at this point. Brilliant or not, there's just not that much space in her mind to remember all the people whose names she never actually learned who ended up dead in front of her.

That's why she stopped caring about people other than her family, and then herself. Because it was too hard to know someone's name and then watch some masked monster make an example out of them. Or watch them starve to death. Or...

Whatever.

After a while things become pretty _whatever._

She takes some heaving breaths, and she can feel it come closer, the evil thing, the thing that's going to get her and not kill her, because there's such thing as a fate worse than death. Zari's learned this, over the years. She's just a little over thirty. That's not old, but it's not young either, not around here.

Zari doesn't want to know what her fate worse than death is going to be, so she runs to the metal fence that's closing the alleyway off from more and more streets, she guesses, endless gray destruction, and climbs. There's barbed wire woven into the top of the fence, and it bites at her hands, but she doesn't care. It doesn't hurt. Nothing hurts anymore. Her skin splits as she jumps to the ground, and she tucks her hands into fists and lets the blood run hot and she keeps running because it's getting closer, it's getting--

"Zari! Zari!"

No.

She stops cold.

No, no, no, it's not possible. It's not possible. Why would she be running from him? She'd never run from him. She was never afraid of him. How could she ever be afraid of him? He was younger than her. He protected her. She protected him. He's calling for her. This is a chance to see him again. But there's something primal in her screaming at her to run and her leg twitches because this must be a trap, and she nearly puts one foot in front of the other but then there's his voice again.

"Zari, why won't you look at me?"

He sounds young, he sounds younger than he was when he died, because he died, she knows that. Everyone she loves is dead, she knows that too. Now there's just her, and she doesn't deserve love, not after what she's done, but she just has to see his face, she has to see.

She turns around.

Her little brother's face is covered in bruises except for his cheek, which is covered in blood instead. There's blood on his clothes. His hands are clean.

Zari's aren't. Her hands go slack. Blood drips from her fingers.

He reaches out to her. His eyes are blank. They don't blink. They're dead eyes.

Behrad's dead, he's always going to be dead.

"What are you running from, Zari? Are you running from me?"

"No," she whispers. "No, I..."

"Coward! You're running from me! You're running from me!"

Zari can't even hear Behrad anymore through the sound of footfalls in her ears, and she sees shadows everywhere except for Behrad, Behrad is lit up like an angel and he cries dark tears like a demon and he asks, "How could you?"

"I don't know," she says, voice breaking. "I don't _know.”_

"Miss Tomaz!" someone says very loudly, and Zari wakes up. Her room is empty and dark and there are tears on her face and she's out of breath and she's shaking.

"Gideon?" she whispers.

"Yes. You seemed to be in distress. I thought it best to wake you."

Zari tries to say something, anything, but the words die on her lips.

She stands up. She's not sure why, it just seems like the thing to do. She's hungry, she's always hungry. She feels like throwing up and she's still hungry, probably. She feels like she's been hollowed out. The dream's already less vivid, but she can still feel the footfalls that are her pounding heartbeat, and she can still hear Behrad's voice, because if she lets herself think about something that's not machines or hacking for too long then Behrad's voice always starts coming back, or her mother's, or her father's, or the fucking robots.

It's better lately, she has to remind herself. She hasn't been having these problems as much, especially with the hope that maybe she can save it all, save her family, save her own life. Especially now that she has a team. Now that she has things to do, places to go, people to see, she's out of her rut, isn't she? Life's worth living now, isn't it?

Maybe it shouldn't be.

Maybe she shouldn't feel like she usually does. Shouldn't feel _good._

She doesn't fucking deserve it, because she lived and everyone else died. There was no sanctuary for them, and she's found one on the Waverider, and she can't even ask _why me?_ because she knows exactly why.

Because she ran.

She stumbles out of her room, making her way to the kitchen because there's nowhere else she can think to go.

She doesn't have the energy to actually go to the replicator. She's not actually hungry.

She just sits at one of the tables and remembers.

_What are you running from, Zari?_

She'd give her life for his in a heartbeat. He has to know that. If she could make it right, she would. No, she's going to. She has a chance. She has to hold out hope.

"...Zari?" someone asks tentatively.

It's Ray. She doesn't say anything. A tear slips down her cheek. She doesn't have enough energy to be ashamed.

"Zari?" his voice is taking on a frantic edge, now, as he takes in the rumpled shirt and pants that she slept in, her loose hair hanging sadly in her face, the tears in her eyes. "Zari, did someone hurt you?"

Zari almost laughs. There's not that many people that haven't hurt her, and the people who haven't hurt her, she's hurt.

Ray sits down in front of her. "Because I will destroy them," he says very earnestly, and Zari actually does laugh at that.

"Cute," she says hoarsely. "But this is all me."

Ray lets out a little, sympathetic sounds. "Did you have a nightmare?"

Everyone knows she has nightmares, because everyone has nightmares. They generally don't bring it up with her, or at least they don't anymore, because sleep-deprived Zari likes biting people's heads off. This isn't sleep-deprived Zari, though, not exactly. This is a Zari with one foot in another world, and she doesn't mind that Ray's here, because at least Ray's part of the world she's supposed to be in right now. "Will I be able to look them in the eye?" she asks instead of answering his question, because Ray's another one of those brilliant people and he already knows the answer.

"What?" Ray's voice is soft and measured, and usually Zari would bristle at being talked to like this, all _woah girl calm down it's okay everything's okay,_ but right now she doesn't mind. Maybe she even kind of needs it.

"If I—when I save them. My family. Will I...I don't know if I'll be able to look them in the eye."

"You'll have saved them, so probably."

"Maybe they won't even know what I did."

"That you saved them?"

"No! That I let them die!" She's breathing heavily again, tears spilling over again. She looks right at Ray, with his big doe eyes and sympathetic expression, and she kind of wants to hug him or punch him in the face. Either or. If she moves towards him, she's not sure what it'll be, so she keeps to herself. "I ran. I ran far and fast even when he was staying to fight and it was my job to protect him, and then our sanctuary was gone, I had hope, I had hope that I hadn't fucked everything up and they'd made it but they didn't. I lived because I ran. If I hadn't..."

"You might've died too," Ray says, and the words might've been harsh but his voice is still soothing, so they don't feel harsh, just true.

"Yeah," she agrees.

"That would've been bad."

"...I guess."

"No, Zari, it would've been bad. We couldn't've saved the world without your help."

Zari scoffs. "Sure."

"Seriously. I know you're gonna keep beating yourself up about this. I get it. But you can't fall into it, you can't drown in it. Things are better for you now. Don't let this set you back."

Zari lets out a laugh. "You sound like you know what you're talking about, Mr. Sunshine."

Ray reaches across the table and takes her hand. She lets him. They wrap their fingers together, and she squeezes hard. His hand is huge, and she can feel it pulling her out of the grayness. "I do," he says, and for some reason that's the moment she starts to cry, like, really cry, but in a way she hasn't in a while. A cleansing way, like a door is opening in her chest and her lungs aren't so constricted anymore.

She bows her head, pinches the bridge of her nose with one hand, and sobs.

"Let it all out," Ray says, and his voice is like a lullaby.

Zari does.

**Author's Note:**

> Incidentally, I am taking prompts for the Bad Things Happen Bingo! An ugly link to the card is here: https://serendipitouscontaminant.tumblr.com/post/174682080060/ahhhh-i-got-my-card-for-the-bad-things-happen


End file.
